Meet Marc, IRIS’ Senior Channel Director, US and LatAm. A veteran in the contact centre tech space, Marc’s journey selling first hardware then software for large comms companies to now joining our growing startup is quite a fascinating one… Happy to have you on board, Marc!
What is your day-to-day like?
Channel Director - Americas. My day is busy searching, seeking and presenting the IRIS Audio value wedge to new partners from Canada to South America. This takes the form of emails, calls, and events, like Enterprise Connect, where we showed up with an incredible booth, complete with interactive demo stations, a podcast, and two Make-A-Wish agents taking live calls right from the stand.
The reaction to IRIS Clarity has been unreal on all fronts. Every contact center could benefit from our solution, whether it’s to remove background noise on live calls or improve transcription accuracy on recorded calls for better speech analytics. This reaction — both to our product and our physical presence at events — has not only made my job easier but it’s also inspiring to be part of a team that cares so much about what it does.
We hear you are a celebrity in the call center space - what got you into the industry, and what’s made you stick around?
Not sure about the celebrity status, but I originally started working for a hardware provider for a telecoms solution. After 7 years, I joined Interactive Intelligence, a contact center solution company, because I’d become fascinated by helping drive first-class CX from the hardware side. The company was later sold to Genesys, and I stuck around to continue the great work they were doing. I have been fortunate to be in this ecosystem since 1997, and I’ve developed wonderful relationships along the way
What’s your most memorable or embarrassing sales story?
My most memorable story is selling Super Media Yellow Pages a $10 million dollar solution. Super Media had 4000 Unified Communication users and 2500 call center agents with infrastructure in 70 different locations. It was complex, hard to manage, and of course, very expensive. Interactive Intelligence had a solution that could not only reduce their hardware dependency but also offer many new software applications. It paid for itself in one year.
Some quickfire questions:
App you couldn’t live without? American Airlines app
Least favourite noise? Bad singing
Go-to karaoke song? “Feeling Good” by Michael Buble
Favourite thing about living in Texas? The weather and the business climate
Something your colleagues don’t know about you? I met Muhammed Ali while attending an exhibition fight for charity with my father when I was 12 years old. I actually ran up to him in between the rounds and asked if he would tell me a poem. He said, “I like the people, I like the Dallas sites, because the money was bad, I won't be back for a while”.